It’s not because I dislike calorie counting or “healthy alternative” fads. It’s not even the ridiculous marketing, nor the fact that it’s one more bottle of booze with a celebrity behind it.

It’s the cynicism, i think. It may not even be intentional, but the success of Skinnygirl Bare Naked Vodka is based on a cynical premise: that its target demographic won’t know enough about booze to know they’ve been had.

(Full disclosure: I work in the tasting room of a small artisan distillery. It’s not the reason I dislike Skinnygirl, but I do have a horse in these races. It’s a small horse, and it’s running a completely different race, but still a horse. And if you’re wondering why I’m focusing on the vodkas but not Skinnygirl’s pre-mixed cocktails, Jason Wilson has already been carrying that torch.)

With a name like “Bare Naked Vodka,” one might think of a clear spirit that has been stripped to its essential nature. Less flim-flam, less calories, just a vodka letting it all hang out with nothing to hide. Surely, they wouldn’t use “Bare Naked” to describe a product that conceals a heinous truth: that you’re paying more for less.

They would, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Look, maybe the intentions behind the vodka are good, laudable ones. But even if the intentions are as pure as triple-distilled vodka, it’s still about making a profit on ignorance. For the same $20 you’d spend on Bare Naked Vodka, I can show you how to end up with more (and better) vodka, in terms of variety, quality, and quantity.

Start by buying your favorite bottle of vodka in the $20 range. Not sure what your favorite is? No worries, this is why bars, pubs, and restaurants exist. This is why folks do tastings. Go out, eat, drink, be merry, and come back with one you like.

Got that new bottle of vodka? Good. Here’s how to skinny-fy it.

1. Open your bottle of vodka

2. Pour out about 1/4 of the liquid within

2b. On second thought, don’t pour it out; there are young 20-somethings out there who go without booze, so let’s not waste it. Instead, pour it into a mason jar we’ll come back for it later

3. Measure out an amount of water, equal to the amount of vodka you poured into the mason jar

4. Pour the water into the bottle

5. Close the bottle

Congratulations, you have now made your vodka skinny. Seriously, that’s it.

See, when you buy vodka, you’re buying two things: distillate and water. There are other factors that have subtle influences on the spirit: what the distillate was made from, the number of distillations, the “width” of the “cuts’ ” the type of water used, the filtration system…

But if you’re buying a bottle of Skinnygirl vodka, you’re not buying it for the subtleties. So let’s go back to what you are buying: distillate and water. These two items are all that we have to work with here. Water has no caloric content, meaning all calories are coming from the distillate – and that doesn’t offer much wiggle room.

(By definition, vodka must be distilled up to 95% alcohol by volume [ABV] or 190 proof. This means that distillate is as close to pure ethyl alcohol as you can get – like I said, not much wiggle room.)

The only way to make a low-cal vodka, then, is to play with the proportions (hooray mathematics!) of distillate to water. Skinnygirl vodka is 60 proof (30% ABV), whereas most spirits are bottled at 80 proof (40% ABV) or higher.

But what about the flavors? What about Skinnygirl tangerine or cucumber vodka? Yes, where would we be without flavored Vodka? Y’know, I’ going to leave that question for someone else. In the meantime, let’s go back to the mason jar of vodka that you shrewdly did not pour down the drain.

Maybe you’re like me, and you have a co-worker who always has tangerines as a snack at work, and always offers you one. Here’s what I want you to do: accept a couple of these tangerines from your generous and healthy co-worker. When you get home, peel the zest off them (or use a zester on them – just make sure to leave the pith behind). Drop the zest into the mason jar of vodka, cover it up, and put it away.

Every couple days, take a tiny sip from the jar. Once it tastes ready, strain out the zest – congratulations, you’ve just flavored your vodka.

But wait! It’s not skinny yet! Measure out some water, 1/3 of whatever the total volume of the vodka in the jar-o is. Maybe you add a tiny bit of juice from the pithy tangerines. Maybe you like sweet stuff, and you mix a packet of Splenda into the water – hey, they’re your taste buds. Just don’t add too much. We are going skinny here.

Now mix that water into the mason jar, and cover. Done.

See that? For the same $20 you would’ve spent on over-marketed booze, you not only have a full bottle of skinny vodka, you have a bonus jar of flavored vodka that is made to your specifications.

Hell, you’ve probably snacked on those tangerines by now, so you’ve also eaten that much healthier during this whole process. Once you make your cucumber vodka, you’re well on your way to your daily intake of fruits and veggies.

For me, this is the appeal of today’s spirits and cocktails. Yeah there’s a lot of bullshit out there, but even a small bit of knowledge will have you drinking better.

This will hardly come as a surprise to anyone paying attention, but the American edition of The Office on NBC and How I Met Your Mother on CBS are closer to their last episode than their first. What might surprise some is just how badly these two mainstays of American TV comedy of the past decade are showing their age. In the past two months both shows lumbered across the finish line, wrapping up their most recent seasons, eighth for The Office and seventh for How I Met You Mother to little acclaim. In fact, much of the conversation about both have centered around questions as to why the series are even bothering to continue producing new episodes. Debates about the quality of the shows’ current output or their future endeavors aside, the twinned declines of The Office and How I Met Your Mother provide insight into the way American television creates and sustains comedies and why so many fall apart under their own weight.

The Office and How I Met Your Mother debuted only a few months apart in 2005, and quickly the kind of critically acclaimed but lightly viewed comedies that had popped up and been snuffed out, off and on, since I Love Lucy blazed the trail for TV comedy in the 1950s. The Office’s mockumentary style and cringe-inducing humor were lifted wholesale from its British predecessor, and when combined with a cast of reliable comedic talent led by Steve Carrell, lent the show much of its appeal. How I Met Your Mother was more traditional in its style and humor, it is a 3-camera sitcom shot primarily on 2 sets, much like Seinfeld, Cheers, and most every mega-popular sitcom since the aforementioned Lucy. Where it differed was in its narrative structure, centered on a framing device of a middle-aged dad in the 2030s telling his kids about how he met their mother, the show specialized in plots that featured heavy doses of asides and callbacks. Most every episode involved some kind of storytelling derring-do, having as much fun in the telling of its story as it did in the actual contents of the story.

Both shows then, had notable differences from the generation of mega-popular sitcoms that were being retired as they came on the air. Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond, shows that had won both massive audiences and critical acclaim, all left the air in 2004 or 2005, and left no clear successor in their wake. Shows like Arrested Development had won wide acclaim but not broken through with audiences, and both The Office and HIMYM more or less followed in that show’s footprints. They carved out a niche on their respective networks, produced consistently high-quality episodes for about 4 seasons, but never broke through as true water cooler hits. They were something more than cult hits and something less than comedy blockbusters, and in an era when TV in general was bleeding viewers every week that was good enough.

Even at the peaks of their popularity and acclaim though, both shows suffered from some notable flaws. The Office’s mockumentary format meant that the Dunder Mifflin workers that TV audiences got to know so well were aware of their role as TV characters, since the premise of the show was that a documentary was being filmed about this particular office. This meant that the rhythms and agonies of everyday office life could be filmed realistically, and lent much to the blooming romance between Jim and Pam that defined so much of the first few seasons. However, it also meant that when the characters acted stupidly or unbelievably it tested credulity in ways that characters in a more typical sitcom would not. When Dwight climbed on the roof of a house during a corporate party to test the sturdiness of the chimney’s masonry or Michael camped in the woods to prove his managerial mettle it elicited as much eye-rolling as chuckling. No fools could truly act so foolishly in real life without sever repercussions, and since we were meant to believe that this was a real office such antics often acted as a drag on the show. This also lead to the writers taking liberties with the characters, changing their motivations and actions from week to week so as to meet the needs of being simultaneously ‘real’ and characters on a sitcom (i.e. the weekly guessing game of how smart Carrell’s Michael Scott or Ellie Kemper’s Erin Hannon were from week to week).

How I Met Your Mother’s unique narrative format also acted as an occasional wrench in much the same way. While individual episodes thrived on the narrative play, such as the sublime Pineapple Incident episode, increasingly the over-arcing narrative became a weight around the show’s neck. The initial seasons were thrilling in their ability to weave a great romance through the protagonist Ted’s everyday life with his friends. Hints of his future happiness would be dropped, and the audience has great fun guessing whether or not this girlfriend or that ex would become the much-awaited mother. As the series entered its 5th and 6th seasons though, and the search for his future wife dragged on with much repetition and only hints towards some kind of resolution, any sense of overall narrative momentum was lost.

For both The Office and How I Met Your Mother these troubling tendencies came to a head in the 2011-2012 television season. On The Office the departure of Steve Carrell from his leading role left the series utterly rudderless. Carrell’s performance had held together many episodes through sheer force of will, and the writers failed to prepare themselves for what was in essence a series reboot by writing all of the supporting characters into corners that did not allow them to step into the spotlight. The central couple of Jim and Pam were ensconced in family-building, having flirted with greater responsibilities or opportunities but failed to pursue them. Other characters, like Dwight or Andy had been under-served in the past, turned into weak caricatures of recognizable types that could not rise into the spotlight. This meant that the show spent most of the past season searching in vain for some vein of comedy to mine, taking turns with romance, corporate satire, and other plot shakeups but none took hold. The show’s core conceit had been stretched too thin, the characters had run out of stories, and the show spent each week wallowing around. It attempted to redo formerly winning plot-lines, perhaps most notably a retread of season five’s Michael Scott Paper Company. In the final few weeks it seemed to depart from recognizable office politics entirely, creating utterly unrealistic narrative twists like Catherine Tate’s odd Nellie usurping Ed Helm’s Andy simply by moving into his office.

On How I Met Your Mother the necessities of the over-arcing narrative meant that that show also fell back on old plot-lines. Cobie Smulder’s Robin briefly revived her romantic feelings towards both Neil Patrick Harris’s Barney and Josh Radnor’s Ted. Marshall and Lily (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan), the show’s resident married couple, spent the season vacillating on where to live suburbs vs. city) and how to start a family (baby now?), but without any real sense of play. For the most part, the show simply spun its wheels, introducing one-off characters and somewhat lazily wasting time while waiting for the Mother’s eventual reveal (presumed to be in the series’ final episode, which may be years in the future). A few episodes stood out, most notably the wrenching Symphony of Illumination, when Robin dealt with the news that she was infertile and would never have children by addressing narration to her imagined, never-to-be, children. But for much of the season viewers were treated to seeing Barney deal with becoming less a sociopath for the fourth straight season and Ted drifting ever deeper into outright douchbaggery, neither of which felt fresh or winning.

The problems in both shows latest seasons are, in essence, representations of the structural supports of nearly every American TV comedy. TV sitcoms are built on a very solid narrative structure. In essence, the show’s basic premise (documentary filmed in small office or dad tells his kids how he met their mom) must be maintained episode to episode. This means that the overall narrative can only move at a glacial pace, so as to make sure that the balance of the basic premise is not too upset. If Ted meets the mother while grabbing coffee one morning or the denizens of the office go about their jobs without comedic hi-jinks the entire endeavor could become dangerously unfamiliar to the audience. Since TV networks want their shows to appeal to as many viewers as possible, this means that no one in the audience who is even vaguely familiar with the series should ever be lost as to what is going on in a particular episode. This works well enough for 50-75 episodes, but eventually the bloom comes off the rose and what once was fresh suddenly seems endlessly dull. Because of this, neither The Office nor How I Met Your Mother have been able to grow or change organically. Stuck in this strange stasis of a long-running sitcom world, they have responded by disappointing many of those who once loved them. Such a fate is hard to endure for a fan of any once-great show, but until every TV executive decides that the way to make money is to emulate the narrative chutzpah of outre series like Mad Men or Louie (about which more will be said in later essays from yours truly) it will befall many more series in the future.

I believe we have two lives…the one we learn with, and the one we live with after that. – Iris Gaines, “The Natural”

To properly celebrate Josh Hamilton is to not look at what he has done with his career. Sure, by simply looking at his statistics, you can see that he is a consistent and proficient hitter (career .311 batting average) who has both power (.549 slugging) and discipline (.369 OBP) at the plate. In addition, four All-Star selections (and probably a fifth this year), the 2010 MVP award, a batting title (also in 2010), and the centerpiece to two consecutive A.L. pennants for the Texas Rangers serve to highlight an already impressive resume.

These are the “natural” statistics. However, to properly celebrate the impressive achievements of Josh Hamilton is also to not just look at what he has overcome. By now, we are all familiar with his descent into drug addiction and alcoholism following his being the first overall selection in the 1999 Major League Baseball Draft. The time he wound up on his grandmother’s doorstep with nowhere else to go. How he didn’t even play professional baseball from 2004 to 2006.

My life didn’t turn out the way I expected. – Roy Hobbs

No, because Josh Hamilton signifies more than that. Between his ability to overcome the impossible while still retaining his significant talent is impressive enough in its own rights. That he should have also remained drug and alcohol free since 2005 is also impressive (with only two slips involving alcohol coming in August 2009 and February 2012 presenting themselves as black marks). Many players have come back from impossible odds, though none perhaps so severe, so threatening, so overwhelming as the odds that stand against Hamilton.

What brings Josh Hamilton to the forefront is his ability to perform the impossible. To play the game with such grace and ability as to call forth the ancestors of baseball.

Red, it took me sixteen years to get here. You play me, and I’ll give ya the best I got. – Roy Hobbs

Two instances in particular bring to light the legend of young Mr. Hamilton. (Not so young anymore, as he turns 31 this season.) The first is his performance during the 2008 Home Run Derby. Though he did not win, he crushed a record 28 home runs in the first round, a record for any round of the Derby. What’s more, his barrage of home runs came in the send-off for old Yankee Stadium, the ‘House that Ruth Built’, scheduled to make way for a new stadium the following year. After finishing the round, he was serenaded over the loudspeakers with the theme music for The Natural, the Robert Redford melodrama.

It is easy to see Josh Hamilton as Roy Hobbs, the young player gifted with an almost preternatural talent for baseball, only to have a promising career snatched away by personal tragedy (real life = drugs; movie = crazy lady with a gun). Such a comparison might be overly simplistic, but rings true in the desire for media narratives. (“He came back against impeccable odds to be a star!” “The REAL American Dream!”) To temper such an overindulgence of Hamilton’s implications, let us remember that he is simply playing the sport of America’s childhood, and that he is making millions of dollars a year, all while getting a second chance that would never come to most other people.

The Home Run Derby serves as the birth of Josh Hamilton as “the Natural,” or “Wonder Boy,” to steal from the iconic bat used by Hobbs in the movie. The crowning moment could have been his home run in Game Six of the 2011 World Series against the Cardinals, coming in the top of the 10th inning and giving the Rangers a two-run lead. Had the lead been held in the bottom of the 10th, there is little doubt that Hamilton’s legacy would be cemented forever in Texas, bringing them their first World Series title. Alas (for the Rangers), David Freese won the game in the bottom of the 10th, leading to the Cardinals win the following night in Game Seven.

The crowning moment happened on May 9th, 2012 in Oriole Park at Camden Yards. On that night, Hamilton hit four home runs, each of them two run shots. Going 5 for 5 on the night, raising his season batting average to .406, the night resulted in a 10-3 Texas win.

To give an idea of the relative scarcity and magnitude of the event, consider that this was only the 16th four-home-run game in Major League history. Twenty-one perfect games have been thrown. Innumerable no-hitters and players hitting for the cycle have graced the pages. However, the four-home-run game is a rarity. Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt have performed this feat, sitting alongside immortal names such as Mark Whiten (he of the 105 career home runs), Pat Seery (86 career home runs), and Bobby Lowe (a paltry 71 home runs).

When examining the career of Josh Hamilton, his early lapses and lack of playing time will ultimately hurt his career numbers. Even after tonight, he only stands at 132 career home runs. He has played in 150+ games only once in his career, coming in 2008. His body, suffering from his prior trials and tribulations, seems to be ready to betray him. When he retires, his numbers may fall short of the Hall of Fame.

Roy Hobbs: I coulda been better. I coulda broke every record in the book.
Iris Gaines: And then?
Roy Hobbs: And then? And then when I walked down the street people would’ve looked and they would’ve said there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game.

However, as previously stated, the numbers do not add up to a completed picture when regarding Josh Hamilton. Rather, the moments are what create a full picture, one that we can’t help but regard as supernatural in its conception. He is Roy Hobbs, given life, made flesh and blood before our very eyes. When watching him, he reminds us not only of our human frailty, but of the occasional moments when we rise above our inadequacy to become something greater than life.

As a means of introducing ourselves and our site, we asked the members of the Addison Recorder to give us a few words on who or what they are, as well as their take on what we’re doing here. As happens with writers, “a few words” became a relative term.

We start with Travis J. Cook, the man who dreamed up this idea:

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Greetings.

On behalf of the editorial board of theAddison Recorder, I welcome you to… the Addison Recorder.

What is this, you may be asking?

It’s a bit hard to explain in a simple statement. To force an attempt: you might say that this is the result of constant exposure to mass media, focused in a collaborative attempt to understand, analyze, and interpret the multiple signals that are coming in strong from all sides.

We are a collective of Chicago-based writers and young professionals (hence, the titular Addison) who have joined together in an attempt to provide a response to what we see as a new age in popular culture. At the same time, we seek to give ourselves something to do on hot (or cold) Chicago afternoons.

Coming from a diverse range of interests and backgrounds, we feel that it is only appropriate to introduce ourselves to you, our faithful readers, so as to breach an understanding of what you’ll be seeing from us on a daily/weekly/monthly/bicentennially basis.

To begin: I am a newly-transplanted Chicago denizen who works within the local theatre scene. I am a new writer, currently working on my first and second books. The first book is a collection of my memoir writings that I hope will serve as a response to the Recession Generation and how Millenials are dealing with the challenges and obstacles put forth by the world at large. The second book is the first volume of an ongoing fantasy series that I hope to have published by some time next summer. You’ll be hearing more about these in days to come. I have also been published in The Projector, a popular culture magazine put out by Bowling Green State University, where my essay “Performing Tricky Dick” explores the transformation of a particularly notorious president from person to caricature. Light reading, in other words.

My interests range from fantasy writing to baseball (though I leave fantasy baseball to those better prepared to deal with an Orc Lord’s WHIP), and from cinema to popular music. I have a vested interest in the area’s performing arts and what they mean to our city, as well as to popular culture at large. My cinematic interests tend towards the fantastic as well, covering science fiction, epic fantasy, and superheroes.

It should be stated that I am a devoted fanatic of the Cincinnati Reds, that I believe Will Shakespeare can do no wrong (except for some moments in several of the obscure plays), that the 1970’s B-movie scene was stronger than much of the A-movie scene of the 2010’s, that Neil LaBute never wrote a play that didn’t pander to WASP males, and that the designated hitter is a blight upon humanity that should be purged from the Earth.

But I digress. Now let me turn you to another of my fellow co-editors in an attempt to broaden exactly what it means to write about popular culture. I put forth that we are holding up a mirror to a festival of mirrors, and that try as we might to reflect the mirror, we are but shadows within the mirror. Gents?

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Next to take up this meandering non-narrative is a man who moves the initial to the front of the name, J. Michael Bestul:

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Oh, dear. The metaphor that Travis hath wrought reminds me of a short story by Clark Ashton Smith. It, too, involves shadows and a mirror, but does not end well for the main characters. Thus, I fear that to write about popular culture is to bring doom upon one’s self.

It could mean that. Or it could mean that my recent diet of pop culture, which includes a podcast about Smith’s work, has influenced my frame of reference for interpreting Travis’ words. I am reminded of Umberto Eco, who wrote… I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward here; we’ve only just met. If I bring up Eco, would you hold it against me? Literally?

(The printed words, I mean, not the man; ‘twould be horribly awkward for all involved, to have an old Italian man held against some wise-ass American essayist.)

As we can see, I like the absurd. I’m a Midwestern kid, ending up in Chicago via Wisconsin, Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Ohio (again). My preferred weapon is the parenthetical aside, and I love to juxtapose. My timbre oscillates between darkly silly and lightly serious. I’ve put angry, beer-drinking lawn gnomes on stage to debate regionalism and the definition of ‘home.’ I won a collegiate award from the Society of Professional Journalists, partly due to a newspaper column that mashed up carnivorous tendencies, Sheboygan culture, and Golden Girls references (years before commercials & sketch shows mined Betty White for comedic gold).

In the realm of the Recorder, you’ll see a lot of essays that involve spirits & cocktails, gaming, writing, and weird fiction. As these are passions that help form my worldview, they’ll be evident in much of my work for this site.

That’s how I approach writing about pop culture here: to focus the multitude of light through a lens of my own, and reflect it… Well, crap. I’ve stumbled right back to a metaphor suspiciously reminiscent of shadows & mirrors. Perhaps it’s time to turn this over to another writer.

——–

That other writer is Andrew J. Rostan, a man who has taken that wayward “J.” and placed it back in the middle of the name.

——–

Forget shadows, mirrors themselves are scary. I’ve read enough Borges to know that anything which creates a double will take you on a terrifying, uncanny ride from which you will learn absolutely no lessons whatsoever.

Of course, here at the Addison Recorder, we’re in the business of teaching lessons to you, our readers, though not in the boring memorize-all-the-European-capitals way from high school. We’re more likely to bring up European capitals only in the sense of which Bourbons were screwing which Hapsburgs… but I digress.

There are three big ideas we want our readers to take away from every installment. First, there are lots of cultural artifacts out there which are more than worth reading, watching, listening to, drinking, etc., and there are some which are undeservedly overlooked or overrated or just plain misunderstood. We’d like you to come away with a different point of view.

Or not. Because, for the second idea, we’re reasonably intelligent people articulating opinions… and so are you. Think for yourselves! These essays are the products of adherence to this mantra. You might completely agree; you might see more nuances or flaws in our statements than we realize; you might think we’re f—ing idiots. That’s okay! Because absorbing that aforementioned different point of view only increases your own critical appreciation. And those faculties are easily transferred from the aesthetic to the real-world everyday important business of living. I was almost afraid to write that this way, we’re making the world a better place, but the world becomes a better place through small actions like this.

Third and last, the Michigan Wolverines and Ohio State Buckeyes are both the greatest teams ever and complete losers who deserve all the ridicule you can muster. That doesn’t make sense, you say? It’s our Zen koan. Resolve it and find enlightenment like we have.

Now, a few words about me. I came to Chicago via Youngstown (Ohio), Boston (with a few-month stopover in the Netherlands, where I lived in a haunted castle), and Los Angeles. From the time I was a teenager, I wanted to be a writer, and the lesson I had to learn for myself is that you need a voice and a medium, and finding those takes years of work. That work paid off: Not only am I writing this periodical with my friends, but my first book, An Elegy for Amelia Johnson, was named one of the best graphic novels of 2011 by USA Today, and there are more books forthcoming. Otherwise, I work good day jobs to pay the bills… and expose myself to culture.

LOTS OF CULTURE. I love literature (M.A.), films (B.A.), music, philosophy, sports (perpetually heartbroken Cleveland fan), the gourmand lifestyle, and… pretty much anything. I am indiscriminate and passionate. I’ll watch Bergman movies and The Hangover back-to-back and love both equally for different reasons. I have John Coltrane, Kanye West, and Air Supply side-by-side on my computer. One of my shelves has NOTHING but 700-page Anthony Trollope novels. I have found the meaning of life (for me) in the words of St. Paul, Malcolm X, and Robert Hunter’s lyrics for the Grateful Dead. Most of all, I rarely hesitate in sharing my influences with others.

Fourth and last lesson: I need editors most of all because I want to pick everything apart and my articles frequently go over. Apologizing in advance.

So now let’s turn it over to the other Mr. A, who actually teaches lessons to collegians, to close this out… and guarantee that I shut up.

——–

Which brings us to our final wordsmith, AlexBean, who has simply done away with the letter “J.”

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I apologize if I was supposed to use initials, but since my last name is “Bean” I figure that will be reasonably distinctive. Actually, that was a good word choice by me, because distinction is what I hope we can provide with this little endeavor of ours.

Like my fellow editors I am a voracious consumer of every type of media, art, culture, knowledge, good beer, and better food I come across. Obviously, this is not so unusual, since this magazine is being founded by four men of remarkably similar breeding and background who all have the same interests, and there are many, many more besides us. So what the Addison Recorder will endeavor to provide is a distinct perspective on all those good things in life. We will complain and cajole, cheer and admire, and sometimes (lots of times?) just plain ponder the popular culture we have been given. Hopefully, it will be better than the torrent of Twitter posts, Facebook updates, and blog entries that make up so much of the Internet. I make no guarantees, since I am not Charles Foster Kane and cannot afford to keep them, but I know we will do our best.

All that being said, the real point of this little piece is to introduce myself, isn’t it? I am a Midwesterner through and through; raised in suburban Detroit, went to college in semi-rural Ohio, and moved to Chicago to get my Master’s and wound up sticking around. These days I spend most of my working hours at Groupon, where I work as a vetter/researcher/whatever-I-am-asked-to-do-next-er in their Editorial Department. In addition, and as my esteemed colleague alluded to, I moonlight as an adjunct faculty member in Harold Washington College‘s Humanities Department, where I teach Cinema, Pop Culture, and Mass Media courses. I like both jobs an awful lot (and know I am supremely lucky to have them), but am very happy to be launching this endeavor as a way to get all the things I ponder on the CTA into a more concrete and widely-shared form.

When you come across an article with my tagline on it here the odds are fairly good that you will be reading something about cinema or television. I have a deep and abiding love for visual storytelling, and I find both of these forms to be endlessly rich and rewarding. Expect many pieces that drop terms like “mise-en-scene” and “hegemonic messaging,” because someone other than my students needs to hear about that from me.

Beyond that I will likely dabble in some sports commentary, as I am a die-hard Michigan Wolverines fan, and will talk anyone under the table about college football (much to my wife’s chagrin). Other sports hold my interest at varying times (those times generally being when the playoffs are happening), and I look forward to sharing my occasional excitement at watching grown men get paid obscene amounts of money to play a game.

I know I will write about other things (video games, history, fiction, maybe even music someday?), but, well…I need to go write about them. It has been a pleasure collaborating with my co-editors on the process of getting this ready for all of you, and I hope that you will all find it a pleasure to be reading our work. Thank you so much!